One More Thing . . .
We've ported a few of our major applications over to Windows.. and as it turns out, while people really enjoy having iTunes and now Safari to use while in Windows... what people really want is to use these great apps in OS X.
Folks are really not happy about Vista.. Folks are even more unhappy about Vista Certified machines that can't run the full Vista Experience, and the fractured and confusing experience of Ultimate, Business, Home, 64, etc.
Hell has frozen over yet again...
Introducing Snow Leopard: Generic X86 version of Leopard to become available that will run on ANY Intel powered Vista Compatible Intel Machine... $129.. Available on Machines THIS holiday season from Dell, HP, Asus, etc. Available Retail for everyone with Vista Compatible certified systems in January.
We've partnered with ALL major Intel partners to give full driver support in 10.6 Snow Leopard for all Vista Compatible systems ever sold with the MS Vista Logo Program. All of these users will have the same user experience, the same great pre-bundled applications that Mac users have grown to love... right out of the box.
Steve will bring out Michael Dell... and show that all of the demo's he showed during the keynote were done using a Dell desktop. Dell will talk about the opportunity users now have. Steve will thank Michael and then review the keynote notes.
People will be loving iPhone all over the world, now they can love OS X all over the world much faster than Apple alone currently has the ability to get out there.
With Me services and the OS X App Store the migration will be profitable, a revenue stream will be there for Apple even though they didn't sell the hardware. They will remind that iLife/iWork can be bought and will run on the 10.6 Snow Leopard just as wonderfully as they do today on 10.5.
Apple won't exit the hardware business. The Apple store is a great model the industrial design that core Apple customers love, and the industry as a whole admires. Mac Pro, iMac and MacBook/MacBook Pro line will stay. Mac Mini will go away, instead of bringing your own Keyboard, Monitor, and Mouse ... you can bring any vista compatible machine along for the ride
Bootcamp will be useable on these machines as well to help with the install and migration. Rosetta will be the only missing piece for the Snow Leopard build. No PPC applications will run on the Snow Mac. (Which isn't an issue for most folks with all major applications now being ported to Intel)
Checkmate!
I think with this move, Apple could more than double their worldwide market share in 1 year. 10.5 Leopard will stay up to day and have feature parity with 10.6 Snow Leopard (with the exception of features that require new hardware), although Snow will no longer support installs on PPC machines.
10.5 Leopard users can upgrade to 10.6 Snow on their existing hardware for $50. (for most users there will be no need for it).
Together the parallel development of 10.5 Leopard and 10.6 Snow Leopard will mark the end of Apples support for the PPC line of computers.
Thoughts?